


Rick

by cinomarsh



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Gen, Human Experimentation, Loss, Memories, Moral Ambiguity, Nostalgia, Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-12
Updated: 2016-05-12
Packaged: 2018-06-07 22:48:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6828295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cinomarsh/pseuds/cinomarsh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Adventure Core remembers his life and Aperture before he became a core. Inspired by Geekenders' portal musical.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rick

The glass case in which the corrupted cores were piled was dark and lonely, cut off from most active parts of Aperture Science. It was lit only by a strange-looking bulb hanging from the ceiling, illuminating precious little. The outer hallway was grimy and neglected and the whole area had an air of quiet stillness.

Unless, of course, one were to actually be _inside_ of the case.

The Adventure Core was trying his best to ignore it, but the sounds coming from the other cores were relentless. The Fact Core was rattling off facts non-stop (The Adventure Core wished that he had lungs so that he would at least stop for breath), the Space Core was shouting something incoherent yet undeniably space-related, and the rest of the cores had been screaming at irregular intervals for at least the last few days.

The Adventure Core, or Rick, as he preferred to be called, was _bored_ , and had been bored for a _painfully_ long time.

The last time anyone had been in this part of the facility had been when the Party Bot had come to dispose of some lingering neurotoxin victims. And that had been ages ago.

All the other cores seemed perfectly happy to entertain themselves. They whirred away in their casing, their thoughts running a mile a minute, calculating whatever it was they were built to calculate on loop. But Rick was different. Rick wasn't built for calculations, he wasn't built for figures and charts, and he certainly wasn't built to rust away in a bin while slowly being driven insane by a pile of scrap metal.

Rick was built for _danger._

Well, that wasn't exactly true, and he knew it. He had been born for danger, had always been drawn to it, but he had been built for something else.

Almost all of Aperture Science's artificial intelligence had been human at one time or another. Most of the corrupted cores had been built for the express purpose of testing different parts of that technology.

Rick knew this because, unlike the other cores, he could remember it.

He remembered who he had been. He remembered being hired as a member of the research department in Aperture's glory days, back when science promised that a big, shiny future was up ahead. He remembered grinning back at the face in the employee bathroom mirror, meeting emerald green eyes.

"SPAAAACE!" exclaimed the Space Core from beside him. His frantic enthusiasm was enough to illicit an artificial sigh from Rick, but it also reminded him that there was more to his job than just smirking at himself.

He thought back to his office, abandoned somewhere upstairs now, collecting dust. He could picture it the way it was when he'd worked there; the large room with three desks, each one against a wall and set up with its own state-of-the-art Aperture computer, and all drastically different, just like the men who had used them.

Rick's desk had sat to the right of the door, piled high with adventure novels, minor weapon prototypes and a stack of paper scraps with phone numbers written on them. (Rick had considered himself to be exceptionally attractive, and it was clear that some of the female staff had agreed with him.) He spent as little time at his desk as he could, always finding an excuse to go out and do something, but he often got caught by management while he was fiddling with something he shouldn't have been and sent back to his office like a child.

The second desk, across from the door, had belonged to Kevin. (Rick had rarely bothered with last names) Kevin was a young guy, tall, pale, blonde, and skinny as a rake. His passion had been astronomy. He had books on stars and planets sprawled across his desk and stacked on the floor. He had a tiny plastic model of the solar system set up next to his monitor, and if you went through some of his notebooks you'd find little meteors and constellations etched in the margins. Kevin's enthusiastic outlook was nice at first, but could get pretty annoying if you hadn't had your morning coffee yet or if you were watching the clock so you could get the hell out of the office and take that blonde from Robotics out for drinks. Rick had developed a kind of grudging, tired friendship with the kid.

The third desk had been Craig's. Craig was a strange man, not very tall, with neat brown hair and glasses. He had a disapproving sort of face, but his eyes lit up when he talked about Aperture. It was clear that his work was something he cared about very much, more than anything else in his life. Rick used to tell him he needed a girlfriend, but Craig rarely looked over from his computer, immersed in scientific thought. His desk was always tidy and clean, with a stack of filled notebooks to one side of his computer and a stack of empty ones on the other. He kept a glass of water and a cup of pens on his desk at all times, and Rick had rarely seen him eat, always too busy studying files or writing reports. He and Rick hadn't really been buddy-buddy, either, often arguing over how collaborative projects should be executed, (with Rick working from instinct and Craig depending on statistics) but he had never really had anything against him. He was a pain in the ass, sure, but when he wasn't around, Rick found himself missing the little runt.

The three of them became a team. They always knew the others' business, wether they wanted to or not, and they looked out for each other at work. At Aperture, it paid to have people like that.

That's why it had been so odd when Craig had disappeared.

Craig had only taken a few sick days in the entire time that he'd know him, and they had been because of a lab accident resulting in mandatory quarantine, so Rick was confused to see his desk empty on that strange Thursday morning.

"Where's Craig?" Rick had asked, entering the room with his usual self-assured gait.

Kevin had looked up from one of his books and over at Craig's empty chair. He shrugged.

"Maybe he's out researching something." Kevin had guessed, going back to reading.

Weeks had gone by with no sign of him. Rick had asked some other people in the research department what had happened, but no one was sure. Everyone guessed he must've been fired. Rick decided that was plausible, but he couldn't shake the feeling that something was _off_ around the facility. Everyone seemed just a little bit more on edge.

About two months later, they got Kevin.

The Adventure Core was distracted from his memories by one of the old speakers in the hall crackling to life.

 _This is a reminder that to ensure the safe performance of all authorized activities, do not destroy vital testing apparatus._ A voice commanded, mechanical but faintly irritated. Someone must've broken something somewhere, which was, of course, common in a highly unethical scientific facility filled with unwilling test subjects, but that voice meant something else to Rick.

He could remember what it had sounded like before it was filtered through a computer and coated in sarcasm and malice. He could still see her perfect mouth forming kind words under warm brown eyes. He could hear her laughing and smell her subtle perfume.

Caroline.

Caroline had been the big boss' right hand when he'd started out. She'd always been busy, running from one errand to the next, sharp and earnest, completely in her element.

Of course, whenever she was around, Rick would put on his sexiest face and lean against something, chatting her up if she stopped for more than thirty seconds. He hit on her the same as any other girl, yes, but she was special. She was so clever, so quick, not to mention drop dead gorgeous. He was crazy about her.

And not that he'd ever mention it to anyone, but there was always something unnerving about that Mr. Johnson, in Rick's opinion. Cave's booming voice and effortless confidence seemed out of place for a man in his situation. Rick was no stranger to confidence, but it seemed to him that someone running such a complicated and dangerous business should be a little more cautious, a little more careful with all of the lives he was responsible for. And he didn't like the way Caroline looked at him.

She had been the person he'd gone to when Kevin had vanished.

He remembered stopping her as she refilled a mug with coffee.

"Hey, angel, I need to ask you somethin'." He told her, finding it a little more difficult than usual to keep his composure through his worry. Caroline turned to him, her deep brown eyes looking questioningly up at the man.

"Well, y'see, a couple of my friends seem to have... well... buggered off recently, and it's not really like them to just leave like this, y'know? Very professional, those two. I don't think Craig's ever even been on a vacation before, and..." He trailed off, distracted by how much more attention of hers he had than usual. She was hanging on his every word. He coughed and forced a chuckle.

"I'm ramblin' now, but I just wanted to know if you'd seen Kevin or Craig? Craig's the little weird one with the glasses, Kevin's the younger guy with..." Rick waved his hands near his head to illustrate Kevin's rumpled hair.

Caroline had an odd look on her face.

"I haven't seen them." She told him, turning quickly to leave. Rick was taken aback, and gently caught her arm.

"Hold on, now, uh," He started awkwardly, letting go of her. He had a feeling there was more than she was saying. "Are you sure you about that?"

"Yes, Richard, I'm sure," She told him, an inkling of irritation he'd never heard before present in her voice, "now if you'll-"

"Caroline, everyone's acting funny around here. I wanna know what's going on."

Caroline pursed her lips and looked at him stubbornly.

"Nothing is going on." She insisted, determination shaping her features. Rick felt his eyes widen.

"You're covering for someone." He said quietly, his voice a breath of disbelief.

"Richard, I-"

"It's that Johnson guy, isn't it? He's doing something to them."

Caroline looked at him, a warning in her eyes.

"Everything we're doing here is for science." She told him plainly, assertively, straightening herself to her full height.

"Caroline, that man is- Everything we're doing?" All of his false charm was gone. "You're doing this _with_ him?"

"Richard, let this go. Please." And with that she turned and left Rick standing in her wake.

Rick's plan had been to go to Mr. Johnson and give him what for, but he only got as far as the office door. He knocked loudly.

"HEY, JOHNSON! GET OUT HERE AND EXPLAIN YOURSELF!" He shouted. If he had glanced back, he would've seen people in lab coats exchanging uncomfortable glances. All he saw was a cloth being pressed to his lips, and suddenly he didn't have the strength to fight. He didn't even feel himself hit the floor.

The next thing he knew he was propped on an examination table in a lab he'd never been in before. He tried to blink, but a single optic moved instead of two human eyes.

"Genetic Lifeform and Disc Operating System personality retention software, test two." He heard someone state officially, followed by the sound of pen on paper. Rick looked to see a vaguely familiar scientist looking straight at him.

"Who are you? Why am I here?" Rick demanded immediately, realizing very quickly that he had no fists to raise nor a jaw to set. The man simply observed him, making some notes on a clipboard. He took a step forward and pressed a button on the side of Rick's new casing, which sent him into darkness once again.

He had woken up in the corrupted core bin, surrounded by other discarded experiments.

He had recognized Kevin's voice immediately, coming from a core with a yellow optic nearby.

"Hey, Kev, long time no see!" Rick remembered saying, relieved his friend was still conscious in some way.

He learned soon enough that a loud "SPACE" was the only reply he was ever going to get.

Craig's voice had been more difficult to recognize. The Fact Core spoke in a kind of unfamiliar monotone, but the intention behind the words was the same. Once a show off, always a show off.

But hearing Caroline's voice over the speakers had been the hardest for Rick. He knew she had to have been working with Johnson the whole time, mutilating and maybe even killing employees in the name of science, but hearing her slowly cut her humanity away and replace it with only a sort of distant gloating contempt, announcement by announcement, had almost been too much for him to bear. When the neurotoxin had hit, he hadn't even been surprised.

She had shut Caroline away, somewhere far inside Her system. Rick almost wished he could do the same.

"There is an 89% chance that you are currently on fire." The insistent electronic voice informed him, jerking Rick back to reality once again.

"One more word, Craig, and I swear I will find a way to shut you down." He replied gruffly, but his heart wasn't in it.


End file.
